by Anna Castle
She lifted an apple and turned it in her palms. It felt so ordinary, so simple and sane. It didn't belong in this nightmare. She felt a twitch under her thumb and held the apple up to catch the meager light. A worm poked its head out of the wholesome fruit.
That is wrong.
Her Tom would never send her a piece of wormy fruit. He would have examined every apple in the fruiterer's stall, selecting only the most perfect ones for her. And he would have written her a poem comparing her cheeks to apples or, knowing Tom, to leeks, because cheeks rhymes with leeks and he would find no rhyme for apples.
This basket was not from Tom. She knew it in her very soul. Then who had sent it?
She heard a coarse retching from Millicent's corner and saw the bottle fall from the woman's palsied hand as she clutched her throat, writhing in agony. Grace lay sprawled on her back, tongue lolling, the half-eaten cheese on the floor beneath her limp hand.
Poison!
Clara sprang to her feet and began pounding on the door with both clenched fists.
CHAPTER 36
The chapel bell tolled nine. Francis Bacon groaned. Why did that accursed bell have to be so infernally loud? He rolled over and covered his ears with a pillow. He felt as though his brains had been baked in a kiln. His head was too hot and his feet were too cold, and he was ferociously thirsty.
Why did his wretched boy have to choose this week to visit his family? What great need could his parents have of him when Francis was lying here sick and unattended? And where was Whitt? Why was there no one to care for him? His father's house had employed more than seventy servants. Now he had not so much as a pot boy to fetch him a cup of beer. He felt utterly abandoned.
He struggled out of bed and managed to dress himself sufficiently for a brief foray across the courtyard to advise the butler of his needs. He pulled his door shut and stood on the landing for a moment, pressing his palm to his forehead. He was quite certain he had a fever. He'd need a sudorific tonic, laced with poppy juice, administered hourly. A noise opposite assaulted his ears. He glanced toward the library.
"Oh, it's you. A bit early for research, isn't it?"
"It's nearly nine of the clock. Not everyone spends the whole morning in bed."
Francis huffed. "I'm ill. Besides, it's Sunday." He hesitated. "Isn't it?"
A laugh. A rather unfriendly one. Francis felt a shiver run up his spine. He did have a fever. He must get back into bed immediately.
"Yes, it is Sunday, Your Readership."
Francis waved a limp hand to deflect the sarcasm.
"Actually, I wanted a word with you."
"It will have to wait," Francis said. "Tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm quite ill. Can't you see that I'm suffering?"
"That will soon be over."
How would he know? Francis took a step down the stairs. Then he felt hard hands pressing against his back, driving him forward. His feet lifted from the floor. He fell, tumbling, limbs banging against the age-hardened oak of the balusters.
Merciful God, he thought. I understand it all.
And the rest was silence.
CHAPTER 37
Tom marched up Holborn Street, setting a punishing pace with his long legs. A church bell had just tolled nine of the clock. Clara had been arrested one whole hour ago. Time was of the essence.
"First we talk to Mrs. Sprye, and then we pound Treasurer Fogg to a bloody pulp." He threw a glance over his shoulder and saw Trumpet jogging along behind. Even Ben was panting slightly. He slowed his pace.
Ben said, "Mr. Bacon first. He'll know for certain if this is Fogg's hand. He'll also know how to post bail."
"Yes, yes, Mr. Bacon knows everything." Tom was in no mood to humor Ben's hero worship.
"Well, he does," Ben said, unfazed. "Besides, I want to check on him to see if he needs anything. He was up too late last night. It doesn't agree with him."
"Doesn't agree with him," Tom muttered. Then he shouted, "The love of my life has been thrown into the foulest, most dangerous prison in Christendom and you're worried that your tutor might have a little hangover?"
Ben looked abashed, which made Tom feel even worse.
"We'll get her out, Tom," Trumpet soothed. "Maybe not today since it's Sunday, but tomorrow. You'll see. Mrs. Sprye knows every judge in Westminster and the gaol delivery justices too. Half of them owe her their positions."
"Don't forget that Mr. Bacon wants to talk to Clara too," Ben said. "He'll help us, I promise you."
"Fine. Mr. Bacon first, then." Tom cut recklessly across Holborn and stormed up Gray's Inn Road and through the gateway, waving impatiently at the porter as he passed. "He'd better be awake."
They marched across the yard. Tom flung open the door. He nearly stepped on him, the frail figure splayed on the floor at the foot of the stairs.
"Francis!" Ben cried. He knelt beside him, his face white.
"Is he dead?" Tom's heart clenched with dread.
Trumpet knelt on the other side and placed trembling fingers on his neck. "He's alive." He moved a hand under the man's nostrils. "He's breathing." His voice quavered with tears of relief.
Tom breathed in then out. Tears stung his own eyes. "Thanks be to God in his heaven."
"We must get him upstairs," Ben whispered.
Tom nudged Trumpet aside and bent to gather the slender form into his arms. He took the stairs as quickly as he could without jarring. Ben kept pace beside him, his hand on Bacon's forehead as if that would somehow help. Trumpet ran ahead to open doors.
They passed straight through the outer chamber. Tom barely noticed the opulence of the furnishings as he hurried in to lay his burden gently on the wide bed. Ben removed Bacon's ruff, cuffs, and doublet. Tom slipped off his shoes and unfolded the lambskin coverlet that lay across the foot of the bed, drawing it up over the still figure. Trumpet arranged pillows, taking the opportunity to run light hands over his head.
"A bump — a big one — but no blood. Not too bad." He smiled at Ben, who was weeping openly with fear.
Tom heard a soft boom from the stairwell. He nipped into the outer chamber and peered out the window. He went back into the bedchamber. "Someone went out, I think, but I missed him. The court is full of men, walking here and there. It could have been any of them."
Mr. Bacon groaned softly. His eyes fluttered open. Ben took his limp hand and patted it. "My bed," Bacon said. "How?"
"We found you at the foot of the stairs," Ben said.
The lads exchanged worried looks. Tom knew they were all thinking the same thing: Bacon had been pushed, like Shiveley. Thanks be to God they had come straight to Gray's instead of stopping first at the Antelope. If they had arrived even a few minutes later, he was certain they would have found Bacon's neck snapped.
The murderer that was loose at Gray's was growing bolder. "Thank you, Gentlemen." Bacon's eyes closed. His lashes lay black against his too-white cheeks. He lay still, breathing soft, regular breaths. A minute passed; another.
"Should we go?" Trumpet whispered. "Let him sleep?"
"Not sleeping. Thinking." Bacon opened his eyes and looked sideways at Ben. "Mr. Whitt, would you be so kind as to fetch my desk and take dictation? I may never have another opportunity to describe the effects of a blow on the head from the perspective of the victim."
Tom was nonplussed, but Ben rose without comment and went into the study. He returned with a portable writing desk decorated with the Bacon coat of arms. He drew a stool to the side of the bed and sat, placing the desk at his feet.
"Mr. Bacon," Tom asked, "shouldn't we send for a physician?"
"Yes, please do. But not yet." Again his eyes closed, but briefly this time. "I can't remember." He sounded nettled. "I went out on my landing, meaning to go down to the buttery. I spoke with someone. I can almost see his face and hear his voice, but I cannot form a name in my mind."
"You must rest," Ben said. "Don't strain yourself."
Bacon looked at Tom. "Have you brought the limner? Does she have the
tools of her trade? Perhaps she can help me remember."
Tom shook his head. "I'm afraid I have bad news." He told him about Clara's arrest, glossing over his reasons for being on the scene first thing on a Sunday morning.
"If Fogg sent that letter, then he is our killer," Bacon said. "Conversely, if he is not the killer, he did not send the letter. There is no reason for the limner to be questioned in the matter of the Fleming's death."
Tom pulled the letter from his pocket and unfolded it. He started to hand it to the prostrate man, hesitated, and gave it to Ben instead. Ben held it so that Bacon could see it without moving his head.
"Well," he said, after a brief perusal, "that is not Fogg's hand. His clerk might have written it, but it doesn't seem his style either. I would expect more verbosity. Perhaps with some thought . . ."
"You must rest," Ben insisted. He folded up the letter and tucked it into the desk. "You've had a very narrow escape."
Bacon turned his hazel eyes toward Ben. He suddenly looked very young and very vulnerable, lying injured and helpless in his vast bed. "Will you stay with me?"
"Every minute." Ben took his hand and clasped it firmly in both of his own.
CHAPTER 38
Dinner that day was a tense affair. Stephen, unable to pry any details about Bacon's accident out of either Tom or Trumpet, resorted to loud ramblings about his reign of misrule. Tom pretended to listen while he constructed an elaborate masque in which he rescued Clara from Newgate by stealth, substituting Stephen, unconscious and dressed as a harlot, in her place.
After dinner, Tom and Trumpet spent a good hour running errands for Ben on Bacon's behalf. They sent a boy to fetch the one physician Bacon trusted; they instructed the staff of Gray's to deliver hot water and light meals on a schedule, but quietly, quietly; and they bundled up a supply of fresh linens, a favorite pillow, and other necessities for Ben, who refused to stir from Bacon's bedchamber until his servant returned.
Ben couldn't even hear words not related to Bacon's comfort. When Tom tried to tell him about Clara's predicament, he'd looked at him as if he were speaking gibberish. He guarded Bacon like a dragon guards a chest of gold, barely allowing Tom to peek at him through the doorway. There would be no help from that direction.
Tom racked his brains for another source of trustworthy advice. Luckily for his overstrained wits, the answer sprang quickly forth: Mrs. Anabel Sprye at the Antelope Inn. She knew every judge in Westminster and would understand Tom's involvement in the case without insisting on any uncomfortable details.
Trumpet came with him. They were silent as they walked down to Holborn, each occupied with heavy thoughts. Tom felt that he was trapped in a shrinking chamber, walls closing in and squeezing out the very air he needed to live. Smythson's death had been horrible, of course, but unreal; painted, as it were, with the colors of the Queen's Day pageantry. Shiveley's death had been shocking and sad, but Tom had hardly known the man. If his death had truly been an accident, he would almost have forgotten it by now.
The Fleming, though: he'd had a conflict with the Fleming. A powerful connection, in fact. Tom had hated him. He'd wanted to slice him through with his rapier, to cow him with his superior status. He'd wanted him defeated, brought to his knees, banished from Clara's life.
But not dead. His death had left Tom with the frustration of deeds undone.
Now Clara was falsely imprisoned in a perilous gaol. His fear for her ran hot and constant, driving him through every new-demanded chore in a feverish agony. Never in all his life had he felt so useless. And now Bacon, who on a normal day made Tom feel like an upstart pantry boy grasping at honors he couldn't understand, lay on his bed all pale and fragile, snatched from death's snapping jaws by the sheerest accident of choosing one errand over another. More than anything, Tom wanted to prove to his brilliant tutor that he, the privateer's son, was worthy of inclusion in the Society of Gray's Inn.
He couldn't do that if the man were dead.
This murdering traitor must be stopped. Tom had to stop him. When this had begun, it had seemed a new sort of game. Tom had been one of four friends guided by a clever tutor. Now Stephen, bosom companion for many years, had turned into a prattling, make-believe prince who had betrayed a crucial secret. Not to mention making a perfect jackanapes of himself. He was worse than useless. And Ben, the man he'd come to admire and rely on for guidance, chose to sit by Bacon's bed night and day, oblivious to the world outside the chamber.
Not that Tom blamed him. A guard was definitely required, and at this point, they didn't know who they could trust.
That left Tom with only Trumpet to help him rescue Clara, solve the murders, and put the world right again. After which, he decided, he would bundle up Clara and Ben and Trumpet and Francis Bacon too, if necessary, and carry them back to his mother's house in Dorset, where everyone would be safe, and he could lie on a soft bed in a warm room and let his sisters and aunties and Uncle Luke pamper him and feed him sweets until this whole miserable season of misrule had faded into a humorous anecdote.
***
Mrs. Sprye was shocked to hear of Clara's treatment at the hands of City officials.
"That pompous, potbellied porker." She added a string of ungentle epithets concerning the undersheriff's relatives then launched into a diatribe about the audacity of men who dared to abuse respectable craftswomen, ending with a pessimistic assessment of the undersheriff's chances of reaching higher office or ever again having satisfactory relations with his wife.
"We'll have her out in two shakes of a puppy dog's tail," she promised. Tom felt the pressure of his dread for Clara abate for the first time since she'd been lifted onto that cart.
Mrs. Sprye outlined their plan with the snap of a seasoned general. Tom could do no more today since it was Sunday. First thing on the morrow, however, he and Trumpet were to assemble a list of necessaries that she ticked off on her fingers: bed linens, underclothes, a thick blanket, food that would keep for several days, candles, a tinderbox, and other oddments. Tom repeated each item under his breath, committing the list to memory.
Mrs. Sprye smiled at him, crinkles softening her sharp eyes. "Don't go buying rich stuff now, my boy. They'll only steal it from her. Plain but serviceable, that's what you want."
She herself would sit down at once and write letters to half a dozen judges, including the one responsible for gaol delivery at Newgate. Sir Avery Fogg was due at the Antelope within the hour and would be gifted with a piece of her mind. She was sure — nearly sure — that he'd had nothing to do with the writing of that warrant. If he had, by her late husband's hopes of everlasting bliss, she'd roast his feet in the fire right there in her tavern.
Tom smiled for the first time in hours. "I love you," he told her, knowing she wouldn't take it the wrong way.
***
Tom and Trumpet took the shortcut back to Gray's. By mutual unspoken consent, they turned west to detour around the spot where the Fleming had died. They would walk up past the duck pond and enter Gray's from the north.
They rounded a dense thicket of hazel and were surprised by a lad about Tom's size, who planted himself in the middle of their path and confronted them with his hands on his hips.
"What have we here? Purpoole's Captain of the Guard and Master Intelligencer strolling along, all by their lonesomes, without any retinue? What d'ye say, lads? Shall we take 'em?"
Three other men emerged from the thicket. "They'll fetch a pretty ransom," one said.
"Lincoln's men," Trumpet snarled. Lincoln's Inn stood south of Gray's on the other side of Holborn. The rivalry between the two Inns of Court was centuries old and fiercely maintained. Its members rarely ventured this far into enemy territory. "A flock of prancing coxcombs. We don't have time for this."
Tom wasn't so sure. He found the prospect of a good brawl agreeable in the extreme. He'd thrash these beef-witted dewberries inside out. He'd stand them on their heads and then he'd kick their bilious backsides black and blue and send them yel
ping back to their own hall.
He grinned at them, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
"I'll take the knave in the middle," Trumpet muttered out of one side of his mouth.
"Good," Tom said. "I'll take the rest of them."
He waded into the fray with gusto, laying about him with his long arms and his heavy fists. All of the fear and lust and frustration of the past few days boiled into his veins, filling him with a scalding exaltation of battle glory. He soon sent his would-be assailants scurrying for the safety of their own Inn.
Only one left. He grabbed the knave from behind and lifted him right up over his head. Someone was shouting, "Tom! Stop!" but he ignored the quibbling naysayer. He twirled twice around with his enemy wriggling helplessly in his mighty hands and threw the dastard full length into the duck pond.
He laughed as he watched the puny minnow floundering through the lily pads. He laughed louder as the measle slipped and fell back into the mud on his little round rump. Then his eye was caught by something furry floating toward the bank.
Not a rat. Certainly not a duck. It looked like a serjeant's coif made of hair. Curious, he stepped gingerly to the edge of the pond and fished it out.
"What ho! It's a wig! And a funny sort of a moustachio too." He held them up. "Trumpet, look what I found!"
He looked behind him. No Trumpet. He looked at the wig in his hand. Trumpet-colored hair.
A disturbing thought crept into his mind. He turned slowly back to watch the varlet floundering in the pond. His eyes were open, he knew he was awake, and yet he could not be seeing what he saw. He took a few steps closer, his feet moving unbidden into the water.
There, kneeling among the lily pads, draped in long green strands of pond scum, was a beautiful, soaking wet, raven-haired girl with fury flashing in her emerald eyes.
Tom was gobsmacked. His legs turned to jelly and he sank backward onto his rump in the mud.